FinCom asks for $122K cut in proposed school budget

Wednesday

May 1, 2013 at 11:45 AM

WESTPORT — Faced with a deadline from the Finance Committee, the Westport School Committee agreed to decrease next year's budget request by some $122,000 at their most recent meeting, leaving the question of where the cuts will come from to be settled at a later date.

JASON PROTAMI

WESTPORT — Faced with a deadline from the Finance Committee, the Westport School Committee agreed to decrease next year's budget request by some $122,000 at their most recent meeting, leaving the question of where the cuts will come from to be settled at a later date.

The Westport Finance Committee set the deadline for last week, saying they needed the hard numbers for the town budget for the Annual Town Meeting warrant articles by the end of the April. That left the April 24 meeting as the last chance for consensus before presenting the budget to Town Meeting on May 7.

The School Committee decision came on the heals of a joint meeting earlier in the day where two committee representatives and Superintendent Carlos Colley met with the Town Administrator, two Selectmen and two Finance Committee members to find common ground on the numbers for the school budget.

In their proposed FY 2014 budget, the School Committee initially asked for an additional $777,700 in spending over this year's budget. Last Wednesday, the FinCom came back with a $655,700 increase, cutting the school budget $122,000.

The motion resulted in essentially a level-funded budget, including contractual obligations approved by the School Committee. The motion passed 4-1, with Michelle Duarte voting in the minority.

She and member Michael Sullivan felt that money should not be arbitrarily taken away without an agreement of where it would be taken from. The other side of the argument centered around the time constraints of the FinCom deadline.

Where the $120,000 in cuts will come from may include several ideas floated by members at the Wednesday night meeting; nothing was officially approved.

One idea that did seem to have support behind it was the brainchild of Mr. Healey and Dr. Colley — involving Healey's re-negotiation of the school's gas contract, saving $30,000. Common consensus was that this money should be earmarked to keep the proposed summer school program viable.

Additional ideas presented by Dr. Colley included saving $37,000 by keeping three teachers part-time, instead of making them full-time as proposed in budget plans; cutting $40,000 out of SPED; and cutting the middle and elementary school supply line budgets by $15,000.

Mr. Sullivan offered another alternate idea, failing to get support for taking $40,000 from the tech budget and $15,000 from the administrative department. There were no seconds to his motion.

In the end it was motioned to table discussion until the next meeting. Dr. Colley's summation: "Give me some more time, and I'll come up with more options."